Russia’s largest agricultural machinery manufacturer, Rostselmash, will reduce production by 30% year-on-year by the end of 2025, company co-owner Konstantin Babkin told Vedomosti.
He stated that 2,700 combine harvesters and 800 tractors will be manufactured this year, with sales planned for almost the same number.
Due to the sharp reduction in production, the company has been operating only three days a week since August.
Babkin emphasized that the Central Bank’s high key interest rate and low farmer incomes are preventing an increase in machinery production, and that government support programs are not fully compensating for the loss in demand.
Against this backdrop, Rostselmash decided to abandon long-term investments, specifically the construction of a hydrostatic transmission plant and the modernization of a precision casting plant.
The total investment in both projects is estimated at 17 billion rubles. However, work on developing new models of grain harvesting equipment, tractors, loaders, and excavators continues, according to a co-owner of the company.
In early summer 2025, State Duma Deputy Speaker Victoria Abramchenko warned that Rostselmash would be forced to suspend operations and place employees on unpaid leave if the company failed to sell 2,500 combine harvesters and tractors this year.
Another major Russian agricultural machinery manufacturer, the Kirov Plant, will also reduce its output by 20-25% year-on-year by the end of 2025, a representative told Vedomosti.
The plant’s CEO, Sergei Serebryakov, previously stated that the negative trend is due to declining incomes among farmers, particularly crop growers, and the high key interest rate.
Shipments of domestic agricultural machinery to the domestic market from January to July 2025 decreased by 30% year-on-year to 89.4 billion rubles, according to data from the industry association Rosspetsmash.
The decline was recorded across key segments: sales of grain harvesters fell more than 1.5 times to 1,195 units, agricultural tractors by more than a third to 1,509 units, and self-propelled forage harvesters by 23% to 117 units.
Earlier, Agriculture Minister Oksana Luth accused agricultural machinery manufacturers of issuing an “ultimatum” to farmers.
“When you have large warehouses full of equipment and don’t want to sell it, but shut down production and wait for it all to be sold at a high price, that’s an ultimatum,” Luth said.
She noted that the price of tractors has increased by 70-80% over the past few years, combine harvesters by up to 40%, and other self-propelled equipment by 20-50%. Meanwhile, the price of agricultural produce “hasn’t increased anywhere near that,” Luth emphasized.
Farmers need to replace 10-15% of their fleet annually, but most currently cannot afford this due to rising sowing costs and low yields in the south of the country, says Andrey Neduzhko, CEO of the Steppe agricultural holding.
He noted that this season, as in previous ones, farmers will reduce equipment purchases and expect longer service lives for their existing agricultural machinery.
(c)THE MOSCOW TIMES 2025